More Thoughts on Recent Research in Pseudoarchaeological Practice

A few months ago, I wrote a post on a book project that is absolutely not what I’m working on right now. It is called “Recent Advances in Pseudoarchaeological Practice.” In my previous post, I outline some of the goals of this little book with I hoped would clock in at around 40,000 words and link together two rejected articles: one on Sun Ra and one on the Bakken as Babylon. 

The problem that I’ve been having is how do I connect these two articles. For a while, I had been thinking about returning to some of my piffling around with Philip K. Dick. I’ve also thought about being a bit more polemical in my defense of certain forms of pseudoarchaeology. Neither of these approaches have really helped me imagine a book that is less two random articles and more a cohesive argument.

On a long bike ride the other day, I came up with a solution this problem. At present I have three articles that explore and celebrate the concept of pseudoarchaeology. The first is my piece on Sun Ra, noted about, the second is my more speculative jawn on the Bakken as Babylon. The final piece is an article that I wrote with Kostis Kourelis on “Dream Archaeology” (which I submitted this fall). 

At this point, this book starts to come together. 

Chapter One: Sun Ra and Black Pseudoarchaeology. 

Chapter Two: Dream Archaeology and Excavating Spiritual Truth

Chapter Three: Global Babylon

Conclusion: Dis-Place-ment and Pseudoarchaeological Practice in the Anthropocene

The trajectory of the book then will start with the idea that in the hands of Black pseudoarchaeologists of the mid-20th century, arguments that Black people were the remnants of extraterrestrials who visited earth to transform human culture severed to center the transformative power of Black culture both in Africa and in the Atlantic World. In short, pseudoarchaeology leveraged the power of space age to imagine a global past consistent with the experience of global displacement introduced by both the slave trade and colonialism. 

The pseudoarchaeology of dreams in the first half of the 20th century, likewise represented an effort to universalize the particulars of archaeological practice. If archaeology as a discipline in the 20th century came to focus more intensely on localized phenomenon, pseudoarchaeology offered a universalizing alternative that recognized the spiritual realm and the unconscious world of dreams as revealing and informing local phenomena. While much of this kind of pseudoarchaeology has taken a back seat in recent times to pseudoarchaeology that favors the unconventional use of technology to reveal obfuscated, obscure, or subversive pasts, it nevertheless reveals a persistent 20th century interest in constructing mystical counter narratives to the particularistic and materialist world of conventional or establishment archaeology.

Obviously, my point isn’t to rehabilitate or even give a hearing to racist archaeology or pseudoarchaeology, but to urge us to consider what pseudoarchaeology has taught us in the past and what we can learn from it in the future especially as we confront existential global challenges that threaten to exceed the scope of conventional archaeology.